


last night's fake blood

by goinghost



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: An emotional parfait that man is, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Peter Nureyev's Onion-like Layers, [juno voice] be the therapist you want to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: Juno shook his head, “Man, I sound like Buddy. I’m not really qualified to be your therapist either, just—” he took a breath, “I guess just think about going to talk to someone about this before you end up standing in front of the panic attack closet when it’s almost four in the morning.”Nureyev looked up from his clasped hands, “Panic attack closet?”--In the early morning hours on the Carte Blanche, Peter Nureyev has a Time.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	last night's fake blood

**Author's Note:**

> the fact that i published two vespbud fics and a joke fic before publishing a jupeter fic is very funny to me considering how much i talk about jupeter in my daily life. and of course it's gotta be a hurt/comfort because everything i touch turns to hurt/comfort eventually. thus is my curse and my burden to bear. 
> 
> it's also very funny to me that this fic is about peter considering juno is my favorite character in the podcast but i just have a lot of feelings about the man in glass himself, mr. nureyev. as someone who has my fair share of issues with compartmentalization, his plight speaks to me. 
> 
> title if from 'last night's fake blood' by miniature tigers! 
> 
> no cws for this one that i can think of besides general talk about being overwhelmed/having a bad time and a few jokes about having panic attacks but none are actually depicted. if you see anything you need me to warn for let me know in the comments!

Once again Nureyev found himself at a crossroads. 

To his right was the hallway that led to the storage closet that had become a catch-all for any miscellaneous things the Aurinkos picked up on their travels. There were boxes full of every kind of snack Rita insisted they buy whenever they touched down on a planet, painted paper fans that Jet liked to collect when he got the opportunity, and all manner of trinkets and baubles that Peter stuffed in his pockets with no room or care to keep them in his quarters. Buddy had a collection of scarves and head wraps that had outgrown her small closet and so resided there, and Vespa didn’t like any non-essential medical equipment they managed to scrounge together taking up space in the small infirmary. It was large enough to fit a person sitting with their knees up, but crowded enough to assure that they’d be alone. It’d become a favorite place for Nureyev to go when he was feeling…like this. 

But to his left was the hallway that led to the crew’s quarters, including Juno’s room, which spoke for itself. Juno had been encouraging him to come to him when he had his...emotional lapses. Since the night Nureyev and Juno had stolen the Gilded Globe of Reaches Far and managed to have an actual conversation, Juno and Buddy alike agreed that communication was an important part of any relationship that they had been lacking under non-kidnapped-by-a-genocidal-anthropologist conditions. He and Juno had been talking, as best they could, about as much as they were able. Juno had told Peter about his brother, Peter had told Juno about growing up in Brahma.It wasn’t always about their traumas but it was always personal, in some way. An anecdote from Juno’s time with his two friends in Oldtown or a ridiculous story about a heist Nureyev had completed or just about anything they could think of that they didn’t know about each other (which was quite a lot). 

Nureyev stared down the right hall before his gaze shifted to the left. Hadn’t Juno said he was always welcome? Of course, usually when he entered Juno’s room he did not feel as if he were coming apart at the seams while someone plucked the stitches holding him together one by one. He’d allowed himself to be vulnerable with Juno the past few nights, but always in a way that he could control. He’d revealed things about himself that he’d never spoken about to anyone, yes, but they were all things he’d chosen to discuss with Juno. At the moment, Nureyev was not sure any of his actions could be qualified as “in his control”. There was a high probability that if he were to see Juno right then he would do something he regretted.

So he nodded to himself resolutely and turned to the right. He hadn’t gotten more than a step down the hall when he heard a door slide open behind him. Just what he  _ didn’t  _ need. Nureyev briefly ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to look presentable and turned to face whichever crew member had decided that three in the morning was a good time to wander the halls. 

Just his luck at the moment, that person happened to be Juno Steel, who was regarding him sleepily and, albeit, more than a little confused. “Ransom? Why are you up?” 

Nureyev felt Ransom’s mask fall over his face as he grinned, sharp-toothed and just on the side of unpredictable. He’d designed Ransom to do the unexpected in the wake of perceived predictability. Join a crew when the nameless thief had always worked alone, go after the Curemother Prime when he’d tried being selfish with his recent jobs, enter a relationship with Juno Steel when he’d been hurt by the lady previously (although that was more a factor of his mask slipping the longer he stayed on this ship). 

“I could ask the same of you,” Nureyev said, trying to keep a teasing, saccharine tone to distract from the shakiness of his words. It was almost imperceptible, but Juno had proven himself to be very good at detecting the cracks in Nureyev’s carefully constructed facades. 

Juno gestured vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, “Water. Your turn.”

Nureyev opened his mouth to answer before he realized that he didn’t have an excuse. He wasn’t in the best shape to construct a conversational escape plan and, frankly, hadn’t thought he would need one considering the current late night/early morning hour. But he knew that Juno would be expecting an answer, one that didn’t involve the intense urge to cry that Peter felt at the moment.

So he searched for the first thing he could think of, “Just felt the need to stretch my legs. I can get restless on this ship all day.”

Juno was looking at him strangely. “Right, yeah. Taking a lap around the Carte Blanche at 3:30 in the morning. Sounds fine.” He bumped Nureyev’s shoulder with his own, “Mind if I join you?”

Yes. He would actually mind  _ so much  _ if Juno were to join him because it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his racing heart and tumultuous insides in check. But obviously he couldn’t very well say that. “What about your water?” He asked dumbly instead. 

“I’m sure we’ll loop around to the kitchen at some point.” Juno shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, looking suddenly very unsure of himself, “Look, I think we both know this isn’t a normal walk, but if you really do want to be alone right now that’s—that’s fine and you can do that and I’ll just go back to my room and we won’t have to talk about it. I just thought—you know, since you sometimes help with my stuff then I could—”

“Juno.” 

He blinked at Peter, “Uh, yeah?”

Nureyev opened his mouth. Then closed it again when words wouldn’t come. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but he felt a tremor go through his shoulders and shake out of his hands. Awfully inconvenient of his body to choose this moment to project his emotions. His eyes suddenly felt too wet and too big where they sat in his face. He reached up and pulled his glasses off under the pretence of cleaning them on his shirt. 

“Ransom?” Juno asked. Then, after a few silent moments, a whispered, “Nureyev?”

“I’m fine.” He slipped his glasses back on but they were crooked. Suddenly the simple task of adjusting them felt out of his reach. Juno’s hand came up to his cheek and positioned them for him gently. Peter brought his fingers to curl around Juno’s palm and took a long (and only slightly shaky) breath. “I’m simply tired. I haven’t gotten much sleep in the past few days.”

Juno’s hand stretched out across his face and he felt Juno’s rough fingertips trace the shapes of the bags under his eyes, now visible without Nureyev’s usual makeup concealing them. “Yeah, I’ll say. Is it—?” he looked unsure once again, “Do you wanna...talk about it?”

Nureyev considered it. Then he considered it for a little while longer. Then he thought about the empty closet at the end of the hall that had housed him on many a night like this. He thought about how lonely that sounded to him right now, standing in the middle of the hallway with Juno’s hand still touching his, Juno’s fingers almost caressing his face. Perhaps talking with Juno, as uncontrollable as he felt in that moment, would temper the wave of overwhelming emotion threatening him inside of his head. Perhaps. 

With a silent nod, Nureyev took Juno’s hand off of his face and began guiding him back to his quarters. Juno went with no protest, making inane and slightly awkward remarks as Nureyev led him down the hall, through the door, and positioned them on his bed. 

“Nureyev?” Juno whispered again. 

“I have felt,” he began, “an almost crushing weight of emotion in the past week that I’m unsure can be attributed to any one cause. Usually, when I begin feeling this way, I’m able to lock the feeling away so that I wouldn’t have to address it. However, since coming aboard this ship and interacting with this crew it has become increasingly difficult to put my emotions to bed, so to speak.” 

He’d turned away from Juno at one point, but he felt the detective place a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “That’s...a lot. I think I know how you feel though. I joined Buddy’s crew because I was trying to break myself out of old cycles, and it sounds like that’s been happening with you except you aren’t really trying to put any new cycles where the old ones were.” Juno shook his head, “Man, I sound like Buddy. I’m not really qualified to be your therapist either, just—” he took a breath, “I guess just think about going to talk to someone about this before you end up standing in front of the panic attack closet when it’s almost four in the morning.”

Nureyev looked up from his clasped hands, “Panic attack closet?”

“Yeah, you know. It’s where everyone on the ship goes to freak out when they don’t want someone to notice. Well, Jet usually goes to the garage but I think that’s more because he can’t fit in the closet with all of Rita’s snack boxes in there. And Rita doesn’t really do the whole ‘freaking out in a closet’ thing so I think she’s also exempt.” 

Nureyev stared at Juno. He didn’t even need to fake the humor in his voice when he said, “You can take the detective away from his private investigation business, but you can’t take the urge to snoop out of the detective it seems.” 

“I wasn’t snooping!” Juno said defensively, raising his arms and taking his hand off Nureyev’s shoulder, “Also that’s a dumb word. I just noticed that it’s usually where people on this ship go to have it out with themselves. I wasn’t trying to ‘deduce’ anything or whatever.”

“And here we see the detective making excuses for the way that he catalogues all of our movements,” Nureyev huffed a laugh, “Really, Juno, I can’t fault you. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how many escape plans I’ve thought of and rehearsed since I became a part of this little crime family.”

Juno hunched his shoulders a bit, “Well, I don’t know, maybe you should. Maybe we should talk more about our presents than our pasts sometimes.”

Nureyev thought to the debts he’d staunchly refused to tell Juno about, the promises he had yet to fulfill, “I’m not sure how productive that would be.”

“Well, we won’t know until we try it, right? Like, okay—” Juno adjusted himself so that his entire body was turned and facing Nureyev, “Right now I’m tired because I barely got any sleep, and I’m thirsty because I was supposed to get water a few minutes ago,” he gave Peter a soft smile as if to indicate it was a joke, “and I’m a little worried about my—you. Worried about you.” He appeared to think for a moment, “I’m also thinking we can probably come up with a better name for the panic attack closet, but that doesn’t really matter right now.”

Juno reached out, but hesitated, waiting for Nureyev to respond, “Um. Your turn.” 

Nureyev  _ hmm _ ed, catching onto what Juno was saying, “Right now I feel…” How  _ did _ he feel? Overcome. Inexplicable. Wild in a way he had trouble ever defining. There was something inside the core of Peter Nureyev that threatened to take him over the longer he spent without a shield, a  _ mask.  _ As Peter Ransom had unraveled during his time aboard the Carte Blanche, whatever lay underneath had festered and grown. Peter wasn’t sure what was below the surface of the aliases he wore, and he wasn’t sure he was prepared to find out. 

But he wasn’t sure how to communicate that any better than he’d already tried. “Tired.” He said instead, “Right now I feel very tired.” 

“Okay, that makes sense. It’s late—or early, I guess.” Juno’s eyes darted around the room like he was trying to decide whether to say something or not. Eventually he settled on, “Does that have anything to do with the overwhelming feeling? That you talked about earlier?” 

Nureyev opened his mouth. Then closed it. Juno began backtracking, moving up off the bed and towards the door, “Never mind, you don’t have to tell me anything. It was stupid to bring it up. Whatever, I’ll just go to bed and we can forget about this in the—”

“Juno, stay.” He reached out and managed to loosely grab onto Juno’s wrist, “Please.” 

Juno sat back down. Nureyev opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. It was strange. For all that he and Juno had been trying to communicate and share their feelings, all of it was firmly rooted in the past. Nureyev’s tumultuous relationship with his home planet, Juno’s upbringing, whatever had happened  _ that night _ and the morning after were all things that he had folded away and attempted to put behind him. They were things he moved past like a shark in a vast ocean. Nureyev was always swimming lest he sink. 

But here, now, having to dwell on whatever was going on inside of his heart and mind at the moment threatened to pull him further under than he’d ever been. It was strange. He’d spent so long compartmentalizing his emotions that the thought of cracking open the closet of his mind for more than the second it took to have it out in the “panic attack closet” was enough to threaten the entire operation known as Peter Nureyev. And once Peter Nureyev had been trapped below the depths he wasn’t sure what would be left, if there was anything at all. 

Maybe he didn’t need to address it all at once. This was a delicate situation. Peter was precariously balanced beneath the waves and one wrong move could send him tumbling. Finesse was in order. “I’ve spent so long trying to lock my emotions away where I can’t see them that confronting them has proven to be...difficult.”

Peter smiled softly at Juno, “I’m not sure what to do about it right now other than just...acknowledging that they exist and are present.” 

Juno smiled back, “That can be it! We don’t need to do anything else. We can just sit here and—acknowledge your feelings I guess.”

They sat together in silence for a few moments. Peter moved so that his head rested a little awkwardly on Juno’s shoulder, and Juno brought his arm around Peter’s back to hold him close. It was a peaceful moment, one where the rapid beating of Nureyev’s heart settled down and the noise in his head quieted. There, in that moment, Peter Nureyev could exist without fear of sinking or toppling or spilling over the edge of a too-small glass. He could simply be. 

The quiet moment turned into a minute and that minute turned into ten and both he and Juno started twitching a bit in the silence. It was broken when Juno finally let out a breath and said, “So…”

“So....” Peter echoed. 

“What do we think about the breakdown boudoir as a name?”

Peter could barely contain his laughter at that. And he found that he didn’t feel the need to. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/GHOSTZVNE) although i'm currently taking a break from it. but i still have notifs turned on so feel free to get in touch if you want! i'm also on [tumblr](https://ghostzvne.tumblr.com/) but i haven't been on in like two months haha
> 
> kudos and comments make my day! i'm nervous about writing the popular pairing in this fandom because so far i've just been in my little vespbud and Jokes corner so please let me know what y'all think!


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